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Are you looking forward to having your own startup? That’s simply grand, as there are only a few things that are as liberating as being your own boss. However, now that you have left your job and eyeing the startup as your sole source of income, you have to be really strategic at every step. The post below details some expert tips that will help you to kick-start your new venture on a confident note.

Do what you are passionate about

Your business theme must circle around a theme that you are truly passionate about. Don’t go for a business idea simply because it sounds glamorous. A startup involves challenges and a great deal of hard work leading you to exhaustion at times – and you would soon lose interest midway if you are not genuinely interested about the theme. Life seems much easier when we get to do the things that we actually care about.

Enhance your knowledge

This is a vital tip when you are about to start something new. You have to increase your know-how on the business theme and follow the industry trends. Study relevant books, talk to experts in the business, keep an eye on the related news, and visit the business’ expos to enhance your exposure.

Create a concise sales pitch

Your sales pitch is an important tool when you have to create awareness about your business. You have to keep on delivering your business to customers, investors, and even potential employees to make them aware of the opportunities in your venture. But then, it’s a busy world today and people have no time to sit for prolonged sales talk. Thus, you have to bring up something that is both informative (with your main goals, mission, and service potential) and concise- the sales pitch must not exceed 30 seconds to a maximum of one minute.

Be frugal in the initial stage

Small business owners are usually tight on capital in their primary years and hence, you should act accordingly. There is no need to set fancy offices; watch each dollar that you spend and check all the expenses thrice. Maintain low overhead – your customers are primarily interested in your service, not how your office looks. You can obviously consider great decoration later on when you have enough profits to think of trendy shades for your office wall.

Hire smart

Your employees would form the pillar of your organization and hence, you must be really careful here. It’s obvious that you will look for seasoned tradesmen, but the experienced ones would definitely charge higher. So, added to the seasoned experts, you should also focus on potential freshers who would be eager to work at lower rates as well.

Workforce management is a big deal and thus, it’s smarter to invest in a workforce management software which can help with all important employee management activities like absence management, employee scheduling, time, and attendance etc.

When it comes to corporate cyber security attacks, the biggest threats originate from an unlikely and most of the time, unaware source—the employees.

According to a recent SolarWinds study, untrained employees are noted as the largest threat at federal agencies (53%). Furthermore, organizations without security awareness programs report security incidents costs to be four times higher than their peers. And as recent attacks have shown, recovering from the hack is no small cost.

Simply put, employee actions are one of the biggest threats when it comes to the fight against cyber hackers. Reasons range from lack of awareness, lack of training and lack of organizational security protocols. From sending emails to the wrong recipient to opening attachments from unknown senders, everyday employees add risk to their organization’s work and data. But the threats don’t just come from lack of email training either. Weak passwords are an additional risk, as more than one billion passwords are already stored in a Russian database.

The first step in the fight against cyber attacks is by having employees become aware of their actions. Below are SolarWinds’ 7 Simple Cyber Security Tips every employees should know and use in their daily work.

Your presence on social platforms is absolutely necessary if you want your business to be successful. Besides, I don’t see a reason why not to use them – they are a lot cheaper and a lot more efficient than old marketing methods, which you still shouldn’t neglect, just focus your attention and funds onto modern methods, which have proven to be quite effective. Being new to the world of social platforms may be confusing, especially if you haven’t used them for developing your business until now. Each of them is valuable in its own way, and there’s a right way to use them properly. In order to save your time and money, I came up with this list, which will enable you to concentrate on the right things only. Whithout further ado, here are 5 methods on 5 different social platforms to promote your business online.

Tumblr

If the right way to represent your business is by using photography, Tumblr is the right way to go. They have managed to form an excellent database using hashtags, so anyone who’s interested into what you have to offer will be able to approach it naturally, without any forcing or brainwashing. This social platform is shaped in the form of a blog and it’s enhanced with the endless scroll, which makes it so easy to use, in order to look up everything you need. Besides, it requires minimal effort when it comes to maintenance, so you don’t really have to be online 27/7.

Pinterest

If what you want to spread around internet are links, the most efficient social platform would be Pinterest. It’s not boring or monotone like you’d imagine, because links are represented by some form of visual content like gifs, photos or infographics. Creating a board on Pinterest enables you to pin anything you want and create a type of database of carefully chosen links. Thanks to it, you can cozily place the content you’d like to share, pinned along with a suitable group of other links, and once again, allow your target group to approach you naturally.

Facebook

Both of the previous two platforms enable you to allow your target group to find you, but Facebook has a completely opposite approach. Thanks to that personal info every Facebook user enters while making their profile, Facebook became the perfect advertising platform – you can easily find specific target groups and offer them your services. However, in order to create the ultimate ad that’s suitable to your needs, I’d advise to do some additional research about your options, so you don’t waste any time or money on something that won’t work for you.

YouTube

Most people forget about YouTube when thinking about modern ways of advertising, which is a mistake. It’s not necessary to work with music, because there are all kinds of tutorials and informative channels you can make so your business can develop. The fact is that your potential customers don’t really find every website reliable, and by having your own channel, you’re able to show them you’re a real live person, which will make you trustworthy. Before you start, you should definitely look up what makes a channel good, and how to create one that will be popular.

Twitter

The most efficient way to share precise information or short news is definitely by using Twitter. All tweets are limited to one hundred and forty characters, which limits spamming options, but it doesn’t completely exclude them. However, you’re able to regulate your followers quickly, so that won’t be a problem. An important thing to know about Twitter is the fact that you need to interact – you can’t expect people to retweet or favor your tweets if you don’t do the same. Unlike previous social platforms, Twitter requires from you to be constantly active, but if any exaggeration is noticed, you’ll be banned or your account will get deactivated. But, if you do decide to use Twitter properly – slowly and with care – you’ll find it very useful in time.

One last piece of advice – when you’re making these accounts, pay attention to fill in every single info box, so your potential customers can access any type info about you without having to Google you. I hope you do try out at least some of these platforms, and I’d really like you to let me know how it goes!

Small businesses are faced with more than a few trials, especially in the first couple of years of their inception. According to Bloomberg, 8 out of 10 businesses fail in the first 18 months of their existence. There are numerous reasons why people lose their business investment, and why small businesses crash and burn so fast, but we are not here to discuss that. We are here to discuss how you can actually keep your business alive. In recent years, more and more businesses focus on digital marketing, and the Web itself keeps evolving to meet their requirements. There are numerous benefits to digital marketing that fit the purpose of SMBs like a glove. Still, many resources would have you believe that there is nothing to it and that anyone can do it, which isn’t entirely true.

Digital Marketing and Your Web Presence

It is only proper that we start from the basics. Your website is the digital equivalent of your office or shop, depending on what kind of a business you are running. It needs to serve the purpose and look good. This is something that you need to keep in mind during the creation process. Make sure that you consider the profiles of people that are most commonly going to visit your website, and their IT proficiency as well. Furthermore, you need to identify the right platform to build your website on, and this will depend on the functionalities that you require. WordPress is a universal choice for general use, Magento is a popular choice for eShop purposes. If you are really planning on putting up something big, then a customer solution might be in order. All in all, make sure that you hire some experienced developers to help you out. You also need to make sure that your website works without a hitch. It is supposed to be a valid presentation of your company, and if the users run into a buggy website, they will start doubting your abilities. It is probably better not to have website at all than to have a bad website.

Blogging

It is a standard procedure to include a blog within your website, but a lot of people are not aware of this. The reasons why you need to include a blog are numerous. First of all, it will help you with building a name for yourself as a niche expert and creating a voice for your company. Secondly, this is a great way to create sharable and engaging content in order to pull in new traffic and keep people on your website. There are also numerous SEO benefits that having a blog pulls in.

SEO

If you want people to be interested in what you have to offer, you have to deal with search engine optimization. There is simply no way around that. The amount of new traffic you will receive is directly related to your optimization, and there are a lot of SEO factors you need to satisfy in order to get results. Still, this is a process, and you shouldn’t rush things. Take it one step at the time.

Multimedia Content

We’ve mentioned blogs and textual content, but what about photos and videos? Well, video content is the most commonly shared type of content in the online environment, so it is crucial that you have at least some of it at hand. Your textual content needs to be backed up with videos and photos in order to increase its sharing potential.

Social Networks

The best places to reach new customers and engage with the old ones are social networks. Depending on the purpose for which you intend to use the social networks, you might want to target different ones. Facebook has great targeting ads, and is one of the most generally used networks. Twitter is generally used for business purposes but can be complicated to use, especially if you are new to it. LinkedIn is a must these days for any respectable company, and it is great for hunting new talents, connecting with competitors, keeping up with industry trends and so on.

Tie all of these together, and you are surely to reach a lot of people. Still, each of these things seems rather straightforward, but these are just the basic overviews of important aspects of digital marketing. There are tons of details you need to work on, and you need to put in a great effort to turn them into a perfectly functioning mechanism. Hope this helps!